


In Like a Lion

by Sath



Category: Original Work
Genre: Angry Sex, Arguing during sex, F/F, Shapeshifting, Taxonomical arguments
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-21
Updated: 2018-04-21
Packaged: 2019-04-22 22:50:24
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,866
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14318778
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sath/pseuds/Sath
Summary: Violante Malatesta has painted over thirty lions, and believes every one of those lions is flawless. But they're not - they are absolutely appalling lions.Katherine de Leon is the lion shapeshifter who won't let Violante get away with it any more.





	In Like a Lion

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ConvenientAlias](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ConvenientAlias/gifts).



Katherine was becoming bored of the Tower Menagerie. It had been fun at first, visiting her lazier relatives who were content to wander around the London greenery and occasionally eat a visitor. But Katherine was a lioness whose mind was more active than her stomach. She wasn’t like Aunt Josephine, whose sole activity for the day had been yawning and turning over.

With a flick of her tail, Katherine rose to her paws and trotted over to the walls. The children gave satisfying shrieks and clung to their parents. However, a young woman seated on an embrasure didn’t even look over. She was sketching something, face slack in concentration. Her cheeks had gone red in the cold English spring, and she was dressed too lightly for the weather. She kept her dark blonde hair braided and uncovered.

A man came into Katherine’s view and leaned against the parapet. His clothes were even more evidently foreign, and his hat was ornamented with a huge feather that Katherine wanted to bat right off of it.   

“Violante, dear sister,” he asked the woman in Italian, “shouldn’t you look at the lion? It’s just underneath us.”

Katherine stalked closer and pressed her paws against the wall. The man’s eyes widened and he took his elbow off the parapet.

“I came here because you insisted that I see a lion,” Violante answered. “I have glanced at the lion and learned all that I needed to know of its nature.”

No glance could illuminate the full, glorious nature of a lion, let alone the glorious nature of someone like Katherine. She growled low in her throat, just out of hearing.

“That doesn’t—” He swallowed as he looked down at Katherine, clearly estimating how far she could jump. “—really look like the lion I’m seeing right now.”

Violante glared up at him, with her brows furrowed and her pretty lips pursed. “Are you an artist?”

“No.”

Rising to her feet, Violante waved her lion in her brother’s face. “My lion is perfect—”

Katherine chose that moment to roar and vault up the wall, using her claws to dig into the stone. Violante screamed as Katherine seized the drawing with her teeth and jumped back to the ground. She settled back with Aunt Josephine and looked down at Violante’s drawing.

It was an offense to art and form. The lion was the noblest of the animals, with a dignified snout, perfect teeth, eyes of a prophet, et cetera. What Violante had done was draw an ugly man’s face, cover it with hair, and give the horrible chimera a cloven lip.

Had the artist ever even seen a lion? Had she been entirely unmoved by Katherine’s beautiful profile? Katherine snarled and ate the paper. When she looked back up, Violante was gone.

Oh, she wouldn’t escape so easily. Katherine loped over to the keeper’s apartment, nosing up the doorknob and letting herself in. The Keeper of the Royal Menagerie, Jon Jonson, looked at Katherine and sighed.

“You nearly murdered a woman today,” said Jon.

Katherine gave a whuff of dismissal.  

“You could at least answer me in English.”

She rolled onto her back and began the change. There was a sound like a fur coat being dragged along the floor and her sinuses popped as her face rearranged itself into her human one. “I wasn’t trying to eat her,” Katherine replied.

Jon averted his eyes from Katherine’s freshly pink body. “You ate her drawing.”

“It was garbage. Disgusting. Unfit to be borne,” Katherine grumbled.

She walked past Jon and opened up the trunk where she kept her clothes. Dresses were awkward to get into, but Jon would be no help, as he was still looking to the ceiling to preserve the modesty Katherine lacked. After a few minutes fighting with her stays, she slipped on her shoes and donned her hat, setting it at a sufficiently louche angle.

Violante had to learn how to draw a proper lion.

“When should I expect you back?” Jon asked.

“A few weeks; months, perhaps. I thought I might pull some cousins into brigandry with the coffers running low.”

Jon looked about to ask her if she was serious (she was), so Katherine rushed out the door before he could open his mouth.

Shed of her fur, the air was bracingly cold. In her other form Katherine could have tracked Violante’s scent, but walking through London’s streets as a lion had never turned out well, historically. Instead, she found Violante’s brother still watching Aunt Josephine.

“Pardon me,” Katherine asked, touching the man’s shoulder. “I have urgent business with your sister.”

“I have no idea who you are,” he replied, “but Violante ran off after a lion offended her.”

Offended _her_? It was Violante who had suffered the offense! Katherine tried not to smack him with her paw. “It’s about the lion, actually. Her vision of what makes a lion is incredible. I must talk to her about it—I’d be willing to pay for lessons.”

Violante’s brother stroked his beard. “Wouldn’t you rather be taught by a man?”

“That would be indecent,” Katherine said. “I couldn’t go to some man’s home, all by myself. The rumors alone would tear my virtue apart.”

“Ah, yes. With a sister like mine, you forget that some women have good reputations. Allow me to escort you to where she’s staying. My name is Angelo Malatesta.”

“Katherine de Leon.”

Katherine gave him a small bow, which he mirrored more graciously. She followed closely behind Angelo, not mentioning that he kept going in circles. He would find his way to Violante’s, eventually—probably.  

 “What brought you two to London?” Katherine asked.

Angelo sighed dramatically. “Violante challenged another painter to a duel because he said she didn’t know how to paint breasts. He deserved the stabbing, but the family asked me to bring her to England until the scandal cools.”    

“Where’d she stab him?”

“Oh, nowhere important enough. He’s recovered, and still painting tits worse than Michelangelo’s.” Angelo took her down a street occupied with well-kept homes and knocked at a doorway painted bright green. “Here we are—at the home of the master.”

A maid answered the door. “ _Signor_ Malatesta,” she said, “you’ve been told to bring _Signorina’_ s prostitutes through the servant’s entrance.”

“Do I look like a prostitute?” Katherine asked. She couldn’t always keep track of human fashion, and if she did look like a prostitute, she ought to change her dress.

“She’s a student,” Angelo replied. “She wants to learn about lions from Violante.”

The maid stifled laughter. “There are no other lion painters like _Signorina._ ”

Leaving Angelo on the stoop, the maid led Katherine up the stairs and opened the door to chaos. There were fragments of knocked out walls littering the floor, marking where Violante had converted a lady’s chambers into a studio fit for one of the Florentine masters. Though Katherine might be wrong, considering that the closest she had come before to the mastery of oils was befriending a chandler.

Violante stood at the center of the artistic chaos, wearing a stained smock over her fine clothes while she stood with a palette and one hand on her hip. Her hair had started to come out of its braids, as if she had been carried away by the violence of her painting, and she didn’t disguise her self-satisfaction to be found at her work. As she slowly looked Katherine over from her toes to her cap, Katherine felt like Violante could reproduce the shape of her body exactly. Her terrible lions aside, Violante was a gorgeous woman, and being looked at like that went straight between Katherine’s legs. Damn it, Katherine had to stay angry with her. Violante’s lions couldn’t go unchallenged.

“Good evening, _Signorina_ Malatesta. I am Katherine de Leon,” she said, doing her best to adopt humility—at least, until they were alone. “I saw your drawing of one of the lions at the Royal Menagerie, and being a lion aficionado myself, I had to meet you in person and beg for instruction.”

“You like… my lions?” Violante replied, eyebrows raised. “Anne, leave us.”

When the sound of the maid’s footsteps faded, Violante continued. “I’ve been praised for many things, but my lions usually go unremarked. I’ve painted all the most important subjects, from the conversion of Paul to Amphitrite fingering herself. Are you preoccupied with lions?”

“One could say that I am simply occupied with lions,” Katherine said. “May I see one of your painted lions?”

Violante set her palette down and untied her smock, throwing it over a moldering fruit bowl. As she reached up to loose her hair from its braids, she said, “Before we go one artistic revelation further, I must let you know that I am a woman of a ruinous reputation.”

Despite her habit of lying around naked all day, Katherine was starting to feel pleasantly scandalized. “I’m an unusual woman myself. Please, let me see one of your lions.”

“As you wish.” Violante gestured towards a large canvas to the right of her. “This one is a commission for a lesser Medici.”

Katherine could barely look at it. Curled at the Medici’s feet was something that may have been a lion, if the lion were described as having a human face, but with more hair on it. What little animalian anatomy the lion had was more similar to a dog’s than the superior cat.

“Ah ha,” Katherine said, “so you cleverly gave the lion the man’s likeness.”

“No, this is a completely realistic lion,” Violante replied flatly.

How was Katherine supposed to respond to that? Pretty as her dark eyes were, Violante clearly had no idea how to fix them properly on a lion. She could render a man easily enough, and showed even greater skill with a nymph diddling herself behind a modesty conch.

“Yet, surely, a lion does not have such an… angular nose.”

Violante snorted. “How many lions have you painted?”

“None, but—”

“I have painted over thirty lions.”

Katherine tried not to blanche at the thought of thirty such unlikely beasts stalking through the galleries of the nobility. She took a deep breath.

“But you put a _human_ nose on that lion,” Katherine said, pointing directly at it. “He’s even balding like a human.”

Laughing, Violante replied, “Anything that can grow a beard can grow bald! Nature is wondrous in its inventiveness. Haven’t you heard of the barnacle goose, which grows on trees?”

“Mussels have beards but don’t grow bald.”

“On the contrary, Miss Leon, I would like to see the mussel that has a single hair on it.”

They fenced across the entire animal kingdom. Violante refused to give a single spot of ground; she was like a Socrates of inaccuracy, and she’d read widely enough to dismiss everything Katherine had seen with her eyes. Violante was infuriating. And _infuriated_. Katherine couldn’t resist it. She put her hands on Violante’s shoulders.

“Kiss me, or duel me. If you’re going to drive me to murder, I’d rather it be fairly started.”

Violante raised her chin. “You think doing the first won’t make me want the second?”

“My beautiful Venetian harpy, you won’t be able to think of anything if I do the second.”

Rolling her eyes, Violante yanked Katherine into a kiss. Katherine had a brief moment of feeling outplayed—she was the king of beasts, after all—before she ceded the battle. Losing the fight meant that Violante kissed her with such a clever tongue and a leonine hint of her teeth that Katherine might’ve purred. Yet all that didn’t extinguish Katherine’s anger. As Violante unlaced Katherine’s corset with immodest surety, Katherine kept slowly backing away, until her thighs were flush with a table where Violante had set down some red paint.

She knocked it the floor, watching it spill paint all over a tormented lion painting. Violante hissed, pushing Katherine against the table as her back knocked yet more supplies all over the floor.

“You conquering Vandal!” Violante cursed.

Katherine kicked a lion painting while she could. “You devil of disrespect!”

“Disrespect?” Violante’s lip trembled. “You’ve ruined my work.”

Violante was nearly lying on top of her now. Katherine reached up to untie some of Violante’s stays until the thin fabric lost the fight against Violante’s full breasts, and Katherine could tease her finger against Violante’s exposed nipple.

“I’m not,” Katherine said, “used to being the one who’s seduced.”

Laughing again, Violante reached under Katherine’s dress so she could stroke her thigh. “You started it—is that not enough?”

“I wanted to win the argument as well.”

“There’s no end to arguing with me.” Proudly, Violante added, “I’ve killed a man before.”

“So have I, but it didn’t teach me anything about painting lions.”

“My Kat, we are at an impasse. Neither of us will yield in the argument that’s keeping us from a very savage game of flats.”

“Let’s defer, then. I savage you,” Katherine replied, “and then I’ll give you a real lion to paint. Far closer than you could ever see at the Menagerie.”

“I’ll agree to your terms if you get naked.”

They briefly cooperated to get each other out of their clothes. Violante’s body was fuller than Katherine’s, favoring an hourglass even without her corset, but there was a pretty little scar above her knee. Perhaps from a duel, or like Odysseus, from hunting a wild boar. Violante pushed Katherine down into a pile of soft pillows, smiling broadly as she did so. Katherine recognized the pillows from a painting she’d seen towards the back of the studio: _Judith and Holofernes_. Fortunately, Holofernes’s prop was absent.

“Oh,” Violante said, running her hand along Katherine’s side, “there’s something strangely feline about you.”

With a sneer, Katherine replied, “As if you would know.”

She pulled Violante into another kiss before she could reply with something aggravating. While Katherine was still feeling out every one of Violante’s delightful curve, Violante went on a full erotic offense. She slid her fingers against Katherine’s sex, delicately at first, then slipped them inside when Katherine hiked up her legs against Violante’s lower back.

“You _do_ like to argue,” Violante said. “You were soaking, and I’d barely started.”

“Tell me one more wrong thing about lions and I’ll turn dry as a desert.”

Violante pressed her free hand to Katherine’s lips. “Let’s not talk about lions at all, then.”

Katherine nipped at Violante’s fingers and took advantage of her surprise to flip them over. Finally on top, Katherine spread her legs over Violante and rolled her hips in the perfect time to Violante’s deft fingers. Katherine grunted some begrudging compliment about Violante’s skill as she reached down to play with her own clit. She fisted her other hand in Violante’s hair, tugging harder as she came closer to orgasm. Violante was saying something in Italian—probably breaking her word about lions, if Katherine bothered to listen—but Katherine didn’t care in the slightest. She clamped her legs firmly around Violante as she rode out one of her angriest climaxes yet.

Letting herself catch her breath, Katherine lazily leaned down to kiss Violante again, then traced her way downwards. She swirled her tongue around one of Violante’s nipples, listening for the hitch in her breathing. Katherine left a trail of kisses from Violante’s breasts to her thighs before she nuzzled between Violante’s open legs.

Violante gasped at the first touch of Katherine’s tongue. Katherine was eager to taste more of her, pressing closer so she could flick her tongue inside and then up, lapping at her clit. She waited until Violante sounded utterly desperate before she added her fingers, just in time to feel Violante tighten around her and shout.

“That wasn’t bad,” Violante said, after they had cleaned themselves up. Stretched out over the pillows as she was, Violante looked like a particularly smug Venus. “We should do it again, after you show me the lion you’ve promised me.”

Katherine had learned that there really wasn’t any way to say ‘I’m a lion shapeshifter’ that really prepared someone for it. Either a person believed you, and was shocked, or a person didn’t believe you, and was shocked, so Katherine skipped the explanation and just transformed on the spot.

Violante shrieked and crossed herself, then hid her face behind a pillow, as if that would effectively block a lioness determined to maul her. Katherine flopped onto the floor, doing her best imitation of a much smaller cat to seem less threatening. Violante eventually put down the pillow and walked over to Katherine, her expression mistrustful.

“This is why you were so oversensitive about lions,” Violante announced.

Katherine growled, but Violante wasn’t intimidated this time.

“You can’t argue with me like this,” Violante said, bending down so she could rub behind Katherine’s ears and along the side of her face. She was clearly a cat person. “Very well; I’ll put some clothes back on and draw you.”

Katherine found herself a nice spot on an imported carpet, directly in the afternoon sunlight. She enjoyed the warmth of the day and drowsing as Violante outlined her in chalk.

Surely, Violante would get a lion’s face right this time.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to my beta, Havisham! Also, Violante is basically Caravaggio.


End file.
